


Finding a Home

by MaddieandChimney



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M, tw: death, tw: implied depression, tw: injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25345306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney
Summary: The five times Howard Han found himself alone when he really needed someone.And the one time someone's there.
Relationships: Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	Finding a Home

At fifteen, he knows he’s way too young to have lost his mom. Fifteen years with the most amazing, loving woman just didn’t seem enough. But then, at the same time, another fifteen wouldn’t feel enough either.

His hands shake when he pushes the door to their apartment open, taking a deep breath. He had tried to stay strong, insisting to Mr and Mrs Lee that he just needed a few hours alone. Even if it was probably the last thing in the world he needed right then. Walking into the apartment knowing she’s never going to be there again is what hits him first. The overwhelming loneliness in the knowledge that he’s never going to see her, to hold her, to have her hold him ever again.

It was hard watching her suffering but, selfishly, he would take years more of it if it meant having her in his life. It’s instinct, to move towards her bedroom, looking at the bed she had spent the majority of the last year stuck in. He hates how the tears start falling, wishing they would just stop, that he could be strong like his dad had always wanted him to be.

The sobs are so intense, they hurt every inch of his body before he moves to curl up on the bed that still smells like her. He can practically feel her as his arms wrap tightly around the pillow, pressing it to his face when he lets out an anguished scream. He’s only fifteen, but he feels as though his entire world has just been pulled from under him.

It’s the first time he’s ever been alone.

.

Chimney knows he can’t go home.

He doesn’t even know if he even has a home, not anymore. That was Kevin’s home, they were Kevin’s parents who had kindly taken him in because they loved his mother and they had wanted to do the right thing. But now their son was gone, their real son was gone and he was still alive.

He couldn’t go home.

Instead, he finds himself standing outside the station, pacing the concrete floor as he tries to focus on his breathing. The tears fall regardless – his best friend is gone, his _brother_ is dead. He couldn’t help but blame himself, if he hadn’t encouraged him to join him, if he hadn’t wanted to become a firefighter in the first place then he and Kevin would still be floating along.

It brings it all back but this is the first time he’s ever felt truly alone. Even when he was fifteen, barely half-an-hour after he had gotten home and curled up in his mother’s bed, the Lees had arrived with a young Kevin and they had promised him they would take care of him and he didn’t have to return to Korea to be with his cold-hearted father. He had a new home with two people who loved each other very much, and a brother who treated him as though he had always been there.

Now? Now he feels as though he has nothing. Mr Lee couldn’t even look at him when he had left the hospital, Mrs Lee hadn’t been able to stop crying and Kevin was dead. He never even got the chance to tell his brother that he had been lying, that his experiences at the 118 had been laced with exclusion and loneliness.

Now he was more alone than ever with nowhere to go, no one to turn to.

.

From the moment Chimney walks into his apartment, it feels different… emptier. Bobby had warned him as much but it still feels overwhelming when he has to see it for himself. He had insisted on the other man leaving him at the door, knowing he needed to do this for himself.

She was gone and really, he couldn’t blame her. He had seen her face when he had suggested marriage, how terrified she had looked at the very idea of being tied to him for the rest of her life. How could he blame her when everyone else he loved had died? Maybe being around him was simply too dangerous.

Logically, he knows he isn’t alone but he feels it more than ever. All he’s ever wanted is a family of his own, a _real_ family that’s just his. He wants to be loved and to feel love so much that he grips onto it at every given opportunity until it flies away. He has a family, the 118 who had been the only ones there when he had woken up from his coma. No parents, no wife, no kids… just the people who had formed some sort of jigsaw of a family.

But still… the apartment feels bigger and lonelier than it ever has before. Tatiana has gone without any warning, not a single word or even an apology. The woman he had spent almost a year of his life with, the woman he had lived with and thought he had a future with but… he was wrong. So wrong.

He had a family at the station, a bunch of people who would be willing to fight for him, to stand by him when he needs them most. But all he wanted right then was someone to come home to, a pair of arms welcoming him home after a long shift, someone to love him because they chose him. He was never anyone’s choice.

Chimney clasps a hand over his mouth, muffling the sound of his sobs as he closes his eyes. He hates himself for it because he should be _happy_. He survived something that not a lot of people would, he’d had a piece of rebar through his head and somehow was still standing there in his apartment, crying because he was alone. He had gone through something life-changing and nothing had changed. He was more lonely than he had felt before the car accident and he hadn’t even thought that possible.

.

The very first time he had sat and watched a movie with Maddie, he had allowed himself to feel just a little bit of hope. He couldn’t explain it, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to but the moment she had smiled at him, he had fallen hard. In such a short space of time, she had become such a huge part of his life.

When she had asked him out on a date, it had been the happiest moment of his life. From the moment the words had left her lips, he had allowed himself to feel the excitement he had been trying (and failing) to hold back since he had told her that his calendar was wide open and instead of rejecting him, she had told him ‘someday’. Really, Chimney had known he would have waited a lifetime for her if that’s what it took.

Whilst he had been walking towards her apartment door, Chimney had hoped it was the start of the rest of his life. He had watched the people around him falling in love, seen how happy they were as he longed to feel the same. He still longed for that feeling more so than ever before because now that woman has a face, he’s seen her smile and he’s made her laugh. How quickly it had all been taken from him.

He knows why she can’t be there for him and he had asked his friends to just give him some space. He had been stabbed, he could have died but more than that, he had spent an entire day hating himself and blaming himself for falling for the lies of a man he had thought was his friend. That feeling of sickness never stopped, the self-loathing that had been building up inside of him somehow hurt more than being stabbed three times. Had he really been so desperate for a friend outside of the 118 that he had fallen for the blatant lies of a man who had spent a great portion of his life hurting the very woman Chimney had once imagined a future with?

He takes a deep breath as he looks around his empty apartment, feeling for the first time that he deserves to be alone. When his mom had died, he had longed for her to hold him and had been grateful when the Lees had turned up and held him when he needed them the most, even if he hadn’t known it when he was fifteen. When Kevin had died, he had felt alone but Eli and the 118 had pulled him through in ways he had never thought possible. When he had gotten home for the first time after rebar, he hadn’t _wanted_ to be alone but the choice was stolen from him in a cruel twist of events. Tatiana hadn’t wanted him.

He deserves this crushing loneliness though, he had put Maddie in danger. Coming home to an empty apartment was the very least punishment he had earned himself. It still doesn’t stop the tears from falling down his face as he takes a deep, shaking breath, wishing, more than anything, that he had done so much so differently. 

.

The minute he walks into his apartment, it hits him all at once.

He had failed – failed Shannon, failed Eddie, failed Christopher, himself, the 118… Bobby. He had failed every single person in the space of ten minutes. He shouldn’t be surprised, it seems to be what he’s good at – letting everyone down. It had started with his father and seemed to just never end.

He had no one and Eddie had someone he had loved, someone who he’d had a child with… a child who had deserved to have his mother as he grew up and Chimney hates himself even more because he’s been in that position. He knows how Christopher feels and he knows he’s had a hand at that little boy’s pain. If he hadn’t already hated himself for how everything went down with Jason… Doug… he definitely hated himself right then. These people were meant to be his family, he was meant to protect them. He had failed.

Shaking hands move to open the first bottle of beer, tears streaming down his face as he just takes a moment to look around. He wonders if it’ll always be empty, if he’s just destined to come home to a quiet, lonely existence when he longs for so much more.

It doesn’t matter how much he wants it, he’s never felt more undeserving of love than he does right then. He’s felt so alone, so many times… walked into an empty apartment after some of the hardest days, longing for just one person to be happy to see him when he walks through the door.

.

It’s been an exhausting day, one of the longest in a while. What was meant to be a twelve-hour shift, quickly turned into a twenty-hour one after a horrific apartment building fire. Too many people had died, so many lives that he wishes they could have saved. He is physically and emotionally drained, trying his best to hold it all in as he bites down on his lip and tries to ease his shaking hand when he turns the key in the lock.

The moment he pushes the door open and walks into his apartment, he takes a deep breath. It’s two in the morning, he doesn’t expect her to be awake but there is she is. Maddie sits up from her position on the couch, a wide grin on her face when her eyes settle on him before she opens her arms. It takes him just a moment to push through the shock, having expected to just crawl into bed beside her after showering at the station. “You’re awake?”

“I needed to see you.” It takes barely any time for him to walk across the apartment, pulling her up so he can wrap his arms around her tightly. He breathes her in, face pressing against her neck as he inhales sharply, eyes closing when the tears start to fall. “It’s okay, baby, you did so good. Saved as many people as you could… I am so proud of you.”

Chimney thinks back to all the times he had longed for this, for someone’s arms to be wrapped around him telling him that it was going to be okay. There was a time when he had accepted that being alone was inevitable, that he had told himself that it was what he deserved.

He pulls back, just enough so he can both move his hands to her growing bump, the grin widening on his face despite the tears. Maddie’s hands move to run her fingers through his hair before she presses their lips together. “Thank you for coming home to us.” She finally whispers when she pulls back a few seconds later, fingers dancing along the small cut on his forehead as she frowns.

“Thank you for giving me a home.”


End file.
